2024 Fantasy Baseball Breakout: Bailey Ober

Bailey Ober was a 12th round pick out of the College of Charleston that looked more like gumby than a front line starter at six feet, 10 inches, and barely 250 pounds. He peaked as Twins’ 25th ranked prospect per MLB Pipeline and was never more than back-of-the-rotation afterthought.

In spite of that, he tore through every level of the minor leagues, has gotten better in each of his first few major league seasons, and just cemented himself as a borderline top of the rotation piece.

Here, I’m going to talk about the adjustments he made on his way to breaking out, why they worked, and what to expect from him next season.

I’m writing these break out pieces every week. Check out how Tarik Skubal became the best pitcher in baseball, why Hunter Greene is on the path to becoming an ace, and what gives Bryce Miller a sky-high ceiling here.

Change It Up

Ober’s changeup was always meant to be his calling card. Fangraphs graded it as a 60 and MLB Pipeline a 55 on the 20-80 scouting scale as he reached the majors while his fastball sat in the low-90s and reports on his breaking balls were mixed. Nevertheless, scouts agreed that changeup was a plus pitch.

Yet, it did not perform well early on in his career. The pitch had a negative run value in each of his first two big league stints and performed poorly overall, especially compared to other changeups across baseball.

Ironically, his results were still solid overall. He pitched to a 3.82 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 147 strikeouts over his first 148 1/3 major league innings spanning two seasons without his ‘best’ pitch performing well.

The issue that was nagging Ober’s changeup was inconsistency. Sometimes he was getting it right and sometimes he just wasn’t. Dan Hayes of the Athletic said the Twins asked Ober to change his arm slot in the upper minors and that affected the feel he had for the pitch.

Just before the 2023 season, Ober worked with Luke Hagerty from X2 Baseball – think, another Driveline or Tread type player development facility – to try and rediscover his changeup. Hagerty noticed that Ober’s middle finger wasn’t always in the same spot when he released the ball and that led to the pitch not always dropping as much as he wanted.

Randy Dobnak also helped Ober with the changeup grip when he was demoted to triple-A St. Paul to start the 2023 season.

All these tweaks amounted in a much, much more consistent changeup movement wise. There were far fewer outlier pitches that didn’t drop as much as he wanted them too. With that, it had three additional inches of drop on average for the season.

Twin’s pitching coach Peter Maki said it “has been a lot more crisp and sharp” to David Laurilla of FanGraphs this past September and the data agrees. Check out these movement plots for Ober’s changeup first across 2021 and 2022, then between 2023 and 2024.

With more dependable movement, Ober took that changeup to a new level in 2024 by improving his command of the pitch. He focused on throwing it low and below the zone with much more regularity. Again, check out the new consistency between 2023 on the top and then 2024.

Also, Ober now trusted it against right-handed batters more than he ever had. Same handed changeups are sometimes seen as taboo, but Ober increased its usage against righties from 4.8% in 2022 to 22.3% in 2023 with ample success. Then in 2024 it was his second most thrown pitch to righties.

The results for the pitch speak for itself. Just look how much better it’s performed year over year.

Here’s the eye test too, just in case you didn’t believe me.

Just utter filth. This new and improved changeup by Ober has claim to be one of the best in the whole league.

Sliding Around

At the same time Ober was fine tuning his changeup, he introduced a new sweeper into his arsenal. It largely flew under the radar because Ober was demoted to triple-A to begin the 2023 season.

Still, he added significant sweep (or horizontal movement) to what was once a fairly generic slider. He tinkered with it again before the 2024 season adding even more sweep and more drop while taking a little off it velocity wise.

However, the new pitch didn’t perform particularly well. Both its whiff rate and Stuff+ fell each of these three seasons. To make matters worse, left-handed batters slugged nearly .500 off it.

Needing a new weapon that offered some variation between his sweeper, fastball, and changeup, Ober added a cutter before the 2024 season.

He felt himself getting too predictable against lefties and told Laurilla he “wanted something a little bit harder than the sweeper that [he’d] been throwing, something to use to righties and throw inside to lefties to keep them from diving out over the plate.”

That’s exactly what the cutter became. Look at the amalgam of all pitch locations Ober used against lefties in 2023 and then 2024.

The cutter helped him unlock an entirely new quadrant of the plate – on the batter’s hands – which stopped hitters from diving out over the plate, exactly how he intended. Without that, he was able to work the ball down in the zone as well.

One new pitch transformed Ober’s approach against lefties. Once one-dimensional, now he was able to access every nook and cranny of the strike zone. Improved results followed.

Command is extremely important for a pitcher like Ober who doesn’t have overpowering stuff and his has always been great. The ability to work inside, outside, high, and low while picking off corners and edges allowed him to lean deeper into his plus command. These two new slider variations were key to him accessing that strength in his game.

Hiding in Plain Sight?

Taking a step back, Ober didn’t have particularly far to go to become a frontline starter. Sure, a tweak here and a tweak there dramatically improved his standing in the league and turned him into one of the most valuable pitchers in fantasy baseball this past season.

Even so, if you looked at the type of pitcher he was heading into this season… he may have always just been very good. From 2022 through 2023 – as all some of these changes were taking place – Ober had a 3.37 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and 19.5 K-BB% over 200 1/3 innings.

He was one of just 14 pitchers to hit all four of those benchmarks over that span along with Spencer Strider, Corbrin Burnes, Justin Verlander, and other ace-types. Some highly-acclaimed players that fell short were Sandy Alcantara, Logan Webb, and Luis Castillo.

In that same piece for FanGraphs, Laurilla asked Ober if he felt he was a better pitcher now. He answered, “I don’t know. I feel like I’m kind of the same guy. Every year you learn, and grow, but I’ve had a few clunkers that have kind of ruined some numbers. But I feel great. I felt great last year, too. I think I’m the same guy.”

Ober also mentioned his delivery feeling “cleaner” now. As I’ve mentioned, Ober is a hulking 6’10” and gets over seven feet of extension in his delivery. That’s a lot more moving parts than most pitchers in the league and such long limbs can make it difficult to have smooth, repeatable mechanics.

‘Extremely tall pitcher takes longer to develop’ is a classic baseball trope that may ring true here. Not saying that Ober is about to become early-30s Randy Johnson, but he could have just finally grown into his mechanics. Then add these small tweaks that helped with his mastery of the strike zone and bam, we have a borderline All-Star.

Results

While Ober was solid through 2022 and 2023, he did hit a new echelon last season as these adjustments coalesced.

His 3.98 ERA doesn’t look all that great because he had two starts against the Royals where he allowed 14 ER over 6 1/3 IP and then a 9 ER implosion against the Braves in late August. Despite those “clunkers”, he had a streak of 11 straight quality starts that spanned more than two months.

Also, Ober’s 1.00 WHIP was fifth-lowest, his 20.9 K-BB% ninth-highest, and 3.56 SIERA 14th-lowest among all qualified starters.

He closed the season as the 22nd ranked starting pitcher in fantasy, nestled between Bryan Woo and Sonny Gray. That was better than Max Fried or Aaron Nola finished.

What’s Next?

I’m torn on what to think of Ober going forward. On one hand, we’re going on three years now and nearly 400 IP where he’s demonstrated an elite ability to keep runners off the bases while maintaining a well above average strikeout rate.

On the other hand, how much ceiling could be left? Right now he’s being drafted as the 24th starting pitcher between Nola and Hunter Greene. That’s a top-100 pick and in the same range as those two, Logan Webb, Bryce Miller and hitters like Luis Robert and Marcus Semien.

Sure, there’s likely to be some positive ERA regression to match his WHIP, K-BB%, and SIERA. Say he maintains the good changeup, finds a better feel for the sweeper and cutter, and maybe even brings his curveball back into the fold. Then we could wind up with some peak Max Fried seasons with some less walks ERAs that may sneak into the high-twos.

Or, Ober doesn’t give the same volume he gave last year and never gets near the high-end strikeout upside that’s likely a pipe dream for him anyway. The breaking balls remain meh and suddenly you just drafted him at a price that’s near his ceiling.

I love Ober as a pitcher, but think he might be much more valuable in real life than in fantasy baseball, especially at the price he’s being drafted at right now.